A Meaning More Than Words

When St. Mary’s alumna Jess Zafarris ’08 greeted our Middle and Upper School students with a simple “hello” on Monday, November 24, she wasn’t just starting her Chapel talk. She was opening a door to infinite lessons in language.

As Jess explained, our earliest St. Mary’s students in 1847 would never have used the word “hello.” Their greetings sounded more like “good morning” or “good day.” 

The word we now say dozens of times a day didn’t enter the English language until 1876, when Thomas Edison suggested it as the standard greeting for the newly invented telephone. (Fun fact: operators, mostly women, were even nicknamed the “Hello girls.” And yes, we narrowly escaped answering the phone with Alexander Graham Bell’s preferred greeting: “Ahoy!”)

Jess, an etymologist, has built a vibrant and wide-ranging career around her love of words. She returned to campus to show our girls that even the simplest expressions are packed with stories. During her Chapel talk for Middle and Upper School students, Jess helped us see that even the most basic words have origins far richer than we realize.

As vast as the language she studies, Jess’ career has spanned podcasting, presenting, strategizing, publishing, and more. After graduating from St. Mary’s, Jess earned a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a master’s in Journalism and Mass Communications from the University of Colorado Boulder. 

She is the author of three books: “Once Upon a Word” (2020), “Words from Hell” (2023), and “Useless Etymology: Offbeat Word Origins for Curious Minds” (2025). In addition to her bibliography, Jess has maintained a blog for more than a decade and built a standout career in digital media as a content strategist and a renowned etymology TikTok creator with over 90,000 followers. 

“Learning about etymology reveals untold stories about people and historic events that have been lost to everyday memory,” Jess said. “It can also awaken our creativity and imagination.”  

In her own words, Jess shared the epitome of etymology facts: 

• The invention of the escalator gave rise to the verb “escalate” – not the other way around. 

• An eponym is a word named after a person. For example, the term “sideburns” was named after General Ambrose Burnside, who had striking facial hair. The eponym “sideburn” is a metathesis, meaning the beginning and end of a word are flipped to create a new term.

• In the 1800s, the fedora was named for a movie character, Fedora, played by actress Sarah Bernhardt. As Jess puts it, the fedora became a “fashionable epidemic,” and was made a defining symbol of the women’s rights movement.

• Sequoia trees are named after the Cherokee innovator Sequoia, developer of the first Cherokee writing system, the Cherokee syllabary. 

• The word “factoid” is often used to describe a fun fact. However, it originated in a 1973 biography of Marilyn Monroe, referring to alleged facts reported in magazines. The author of the novel, Normal Baylor, used the suffix “-oid,” meaning “appearance” or “shape.” Therefore, as Jess clarifies, a factoid is not a fact, but “something that has the shape of a fact.” 

• The word “galaxy” comes from the Greek phrase, “galaxias kyklos,” which means “milky circle.” So, when we say “the Milky Way Galaxy,” we’re technically saying “the milky Milky Way Galaxy.” 

• The term “hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia" is, as Jess stated, “an intentionally silly long word that means fear of long words.”

And these were just a few of Jess' examples proving that the study of language reveals far more than meets the eye. Our words, grammar, and patterns of communication unearth deep history, culture, and connection. 

“The more you study etymology, linguistics, and the development of language, you realize that language is always changing,” Jess reflected. While grammar is every St. Mary’s girl’s best friend, Jess encouraged our students to embrace speaking and writing in ways that spark creativity. 

“Learn about AI, just so you can understand its limitations,” Jess urged. “Your writing and your voice will always bring stronger, brighter, and are  more significant than anything a robot can create for you.” 

For Jess, finding her voice began with beloved former St. Mary’s teacher Madame Nanette Quinn. 

Jess reminisced about a particular French class where Madame Quinn, flabbergasted that her students came across a French word they did not know, urged them to be curious and scour their French dictionaries for the meaning. This experience sparked Jess' never-ending quest for knowledge, igniting a career that has meant more to her than words. 

Jess left our students with one final message – perhaps the most paramount lesson etymology has taught her. 

“Wield your words for good, for creativity, and the cultivation of knowledge,” Jess beamed. “Every word holds within it a world’s worth of discovery waiting for you to explore. After all, if you learn to look beyond mere letters and take words for more than granted, you might find etymology quite useful, after all.” 

Her message reminded us that curiosity can start anywhere, even with a word we barely notice. And at St. Mary’s, that spark of curiosity is something we’re always excited to say “hello” to.

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You can learn more about Jess and read her blog, Useless Etymology, on her website here.